


Ten Year Night

by Hth



Series: Pretty Good Universe [5]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anniversary, Future Fic, Gen, Love Letters, Nostalgia, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: Eliot was never sixteen the way that Ted is sixteen.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Pretty Good Universe [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686286
Comments: 50
Kudos: 119





	Ten Year Night

It's no quieter in the house than any other night, but it feels quiet. Like in a movie, when the background sounds cut out for the drama, the focus.

Eliot is packing. Everything sounds so loud in the room. Hangers scraping over the closet rails. Soft thump of dress shoes into his suitcase. Margo is in bed flicking through pages on her tablet, bluetooth in her ear. Quiet.

Upstairs, Eliot can hear the thump-thump-thump of little feet, distant giggling. Water in the pipes as the bathtub fills.

There's no shortage of noise, not in this house – three adults, a teenager, and two preschool girls? Jesus Christ, if it were ever actually quiet around here, Eliot would assume he had gone spontaneously deaf.

Why does it feel so quiet? Why does he feel so far away?

If Eliot didn't know better, he'd think it was some kind of grief thing. But he does know better.

“You don't have to go,” Margo tells him, pulling out the bluetooth. She hasn't said it yet, but it's been all over her face since the minute he said he planned to make the trip. Eliot's amazed she waited this long. “The lawyers will send you a fucking letter if you're getting anything.”

He's not _getting_ anything; there's nothing to get. The farm went under years ago. There's nothing else, never was anything else worth having. “I know I don't have to go,” Eliot says. “I don't know, I just. I do have to.”

There's no reason involved, Eliot just. He feels like he should.

Everyone left eventually. His brother and sister. Two wives. His only son. The man drank himself to death, as alone as a human being can possibly be, and that's – whatever, probably what he deserved. Eliot's not sad, and he doesn't have any regrets.

Why does everything feel like a movie? Why the _drama_?

“Don't go alone,” Margo says. “You'll just end up doing something stupid.”

Absolutely ridiculous. Eliot hasn't done anything stupid in _ages_. “You need Q here,” he says, again. Teddy's good with the girls, but he's sixteen, it's not fair to press-gang him into service as a substitute parent, and Margo is-- Look, parenting a five-year-old and a three-year-old is two full-time jobs, possibly three. He can't leave Margo with all of this on her plate for a whole weekend.

He could, he guesses. But he won't.

Anyway, Eliot can take care of himself. He's not even sad, honestly.

The first noise that really penetrates is the pelting of feet coming down the stairs, and Eliot closes up the suitcase and moves it away from the bed just in time to clear the space for Frey and Fiona to come exploding through the bedroom door, piling onto the bed to get their goodnight kisses from Mama. Quentin follows along behind them, looking extremely damp and rumpled. Eliot's been there; bath time is no joke.

The house is never quiet. Eliot doesn't know why he feels so – quiet inside, but it's been this way for days, ever since he got the call from the hospital. _If you want to see him again, you should come now._

Eliot didn't, so he didn't.

He tucks his daughters into bed, kissing their faces and their hands, making them laugh at his theatrical voices and making them promise to be extra, extra, extra good this weekend while he's away. His two little monsters, dark-haired and feral in their own distinctive ways: Freya, willful and whip-smart, with a double-dose of dramatic instincts in her blood. Fiona, soft and shy, moody and imaginative, her thoughts often too big and strange for her little vocabulary. God, Eliot knows he's not supposed to have a favorite, but there's something about Fiona's neediness, about her dimples, about the sheer accidental nature of her existence, about the way she looks at him like she's known him in a million previous incarnations – _something_ that cuts into Eliot and exposes layers of him that he didn't know were even under there. In three years, he's never been apart from her even for one day. He's not supposed to have a favorite, but she's made of Eliot's favorite people in the whole world, and there's a part of Eliot that never wants to so much as let her out of his arms, forget about a weekend apart.

Unintentionally, unbidden, Eliot thinks of his father. How he'd crush Eliot in his arms, sweat-damp and whiskey-scented, slurring things like _what am I doing_ , things like _all I have left of her_. Things Eliot didn't understand then and doesn't want to understand now, but somehow he kind of can't help it.

Understanding isn't forgiveness, that's bullshit. It's different. But it's something.

“What are you thinking?” Quentin asks him in the hallway after lights are off and doors are shut, reaching for Eliot's hand and brushing it with his fingers. “You know, if you want to change your mind, it's--”

“I wasn't thinking that,” Eliot says. “Just. You know Fiona looks more like you all the time.”

Quentin scowls, which doesn't help; Eliot's seen that exact look on the face of a cranky toddler more times than he can count. “It's in your head,” he says.

It's not, but if Quentin's not ready to admit it yet, then he's not ready. The circumstances of Fiona's conception are a lovely, wine-soaked vacation blur for all of them; Quentin swears he remembers the details better than Eliot does, that Eliot is the only possible father on basic anatomical grounds, and Eliot has always – preferred to believe him, not because he's possessive of Fi or of, god forbid, Bambi, but because he finds it comfortable to look at the two girls and regard them as sisters in an uncomplicated way. God, isn't their family complicated enough without added intrigue? But there's too much of Quentin's strong, squared-off features in her face to ignore, and – here's the part that Eliot suspects Q is _truly_ unwilling to face – too much of Quentin's inward-turning moodiness in her personality. It was always such a relief to Q, that Ted didn't turn out to inherit any noticeable instability from either of his parents; he's not going to rush joyfully into the possibility that it's a bullet the family did not dodge twice.

Eliot isn't _in love_ with the idea, either. Of course he's not; of course he'd rather believe that nothing will ever make his sweet, strange little Fiona sad or sick or in pain of any kind at all, but – whatever, that's not-- You get the kids you get. “You think you're ready for this weekend?” Eliot says, instead of pressing the issue.

“I think Margo and I can keep them alive for a couple of days, yeah,” Quentin says, dry but indulgent. “Not like _you_ could, of course, but.”

“I am irreplaceable,” Eliot agrees.

“Exactly the word that comes to mind,” Quentin says, tilting his face up for his goodnight kiss.

It's a good kiss. Eliot would keep it going, if Quentin were three inches taller.

“Hey, um,” Quentin says when Eliot lets him go. “I don't know if I should – bring this up, I know you've got a lot on your mind--”

“Not really,” Eliot says. He's not responsible for anything. He doesn't have to make any decisions. He doesn't even really feel...that much. It's strange. He can't stop thinking about this trip, but he doesn't think anything _about_ it. Just that he should go. He has plenty of free storage space for whatever's on Q's mind. “What do you need, sweet boy?”

Quentin's mouth twists in that funny smile-frown that means he doesn't like what Eliot said but somehow it kind of makes him like Eliot more. “You just assume I have a favor to ask, don't you?”

Maybe. What else would make him nervous to just spit it out? Eliot shrugs. “Well, now I'm desperately curious.”

Quentin glances around the hallway, looking displeased by the circumstances. He runs his hand through his hair and huffs a little. He's the cutest little professor in the _world_ , Eliot just can't stand it. “God, I shouldn't have, never mind--”

“I'll kill you,” Eliot says. “ _What?_ ”

“It's, it's November fifteenth,” Quentin says, disregarding the threat to his life entirely. “It's, uh. I kind of had a thing planned for tonight – I mean, before, before all this, but. It can wait.”

November fifteenth is – not a thing? Eliot spins frantically through a picture of his calendar app in his brain, and it's – nothing, not like a birthday or something they've been planning. What the fuck is November fifteenth? “I'm sorry,” Eliot says awkwardly. “Should I – did I forget--?”

“No, no, you didn't,” Quentin rushes to say, pressing his hand to Eliot's chest. “It's not – it was kind of a thing to me, but I didn't tell you, you wouldn't have. You know. Any reason to know. I'm sorry, I wanted to surprise you, I should've just. I should've waited to say anything til you got home.”

They could keep at this, and Eliot would probably pry more details out of him eventually. Quentin is not a good secret-keeper, or a good Eliot-resister. And it's tempting, he is curious, but he's mostly tired, and he plans to leave early in the morning. So instead he picks up Quentin's hand and moves it to his lips. “Okay,” he says quietly, kissing the back of Quentin's hand and raising it to press briefly against Eliot's cheek. “Raincheck, then. Say you love me.”

Quentin smiles. “I was gonna say it. Like, unprompted.” Eliot shrugs, which only makes Quentin smile more, smile wider, smile better. That was the goal; when isn't it the goal? “Fine, I love you,” Q huffs. “Not romantic when you tell me to say it, but have it your way or whatever.” Eliot kisses him again, and he doesn't get anymore flak about _not romantic_.

“Say you love me,” Eliot says again once he's slid into bed. He drapes his arm over Margo's lap. Looks up at her in the blue light of her screen.

“Very manipulative,” she says, reaching down to rifle through his hair. “Playing on my sympathies for treats. You're worse than the babies.”

Eliot smiles a little and squirms closer. He's lying down and she's sitting; his forehead brushes the silky texture of the nightgown, the warmth of her hip underneath it. “I'm an orphan,” he says. “Who's _mean to orphans_? That's like, Charles Dickens villain territory.”

“You have _never_ read a Dickens novel in your life,” Margo laughs.

“I've seen _Oliver_. Say it.”

“Well, I damn sure didn't marry you for your money,” she says with some finality.

He's satisfied with that. Honestly, he would've been disappointed if she'd indulged him. His wife is many things, but obedient is not one of them, thank Christ. “November fifteenth mean anything to you?” he asks. Margo pauses, then shakes her head. Some whim of Q's, then; Eliot's curious, but he can wait.

He thinks Margo does kiss him when she puts aside the computer and settles in to sleep, but he's barely awake at that point and can't be sure he didn't dream it.

It's about nine hours to Indianapolis, almost entirely straight interstate, then a left and another hour or so into Whiteland. Eliot can make the drive in a day, but it seems pointless to rush himself just to land in a hotel in time for bed. He figures he can get as far as Columbus before he's driving straight into the setting sun, and that's as good a time as any to settle in overnight – get a decent dinner, sleep, and do the last few hours on Saturday morning. He still plans to leave pretty early, slip out the door and out of the way before the breakfast circus starts.

The thing is, when he slips out the door, he's not alone. That wasn't the plan.

Ted bops up from the couch, shouldering a duffle bag and sticking his phone into the pocket of his hoodie, and he gives Eliot that damn dimply Coldwater smile, flipping back the world's stupidest haircut, that cost Eliot so, so much money. “Absolutely not,” Eliot says.

“Yep,” Ted says.

“You have school,” Eliot says.

Ted rolls his eyes. “I'm allowed to miss a day of school for my _grandfather's funeral_.”

“ _He was not your grandfather_ ,” Eliot says. He's not really aware of how loud he says it, until he sees Ted lean back – sees the surprise and the caution replace the sparkle in his eyes. “I mean,” Eliot mutters, lowering his eyes. “You know what I mean. You never even met him.”

“Well, I want to go,” Ted says. He sounds – so bizarrely adult, calm and certain. He sounds like that about half the time now. “Mom thinks it's a good idea.”

Yeah, she thinks it's such a great idea she has to sneak it past Eliot at the last minute. Confidence inspired. “So you're my babysitter?” Eliot says, reaching for his coat on the coatrack. He's already basically given up. You really might as well, when Margo makes a decision and sends a child to enforce it – the ultimate one-two punch of undermining Eliot's tenuous authority in his own household.

“Hey, I'm a good babysitter,” Ted says brightly. And, ugh, he actually is, so Eliot can't even say anything.

“Come on,” Eliot says, like he even really has an option in the matter. And just like that, Eliot has a road-trip babysitter, in the form of a genderfluid teenager with a learner's permit whose haircut and motorcycle boots cost _entirely too much_ for a person with no job.

It's fine. He puts his boots on Eliot's upholstery, because of course he does. He spends most of the trip texting. Eliot lets him drive for about an hour in southern Pennsylvania, for the highway practice. They stop for gas, and Ted buys a huge bag of sour gummies and shares them with Eliot. He's not a bother.

Eliot still has no idea why Ted would ever agree to this. It has to be unbelievably boring, even weighed against the prospect of being allowed to skip a day of school. “What did your mom bribe you with,” Eliot eventually asks him, “to get you to give up your whole weekend?”

Ted shrugs, reflexively checking his smoky eye in the rear-view mirror for the millionth time, using the tip of his pinky to fuss with the blurred edge of his eyeliner. “I didn't have any plans.”

Like Eliot's going to buy that. “Your band's not practicing?”

Ted frowns. “I don't know if.... No. Not this weekend.”

Eliot doesn't love that answer. He doesn't know if _what_? Is he quitting, are they breaking up? He was so excited about the band when it started, and it's been less than a year. That can't be good, right? To be done with it already? And is it the practicing he's tired of, or is it the wrong fit for him creatively, or is there, like, drama? Eliot wants to ask, but.

A few years ago, he would've asked. Now things are.... Ted is such a _grown-up_ , about half the time. He should get to decide, right? When he wants to talk. What parts of his life he wants to share. God, when Eliot was sixteen, the last thing--

Well, but. That's not a good standard to judge by. When Eliot was sixteen, who the fuck was he going to talk to?

“I thought you guys were getting pretty good,” Eliot says.

“No, you didn't,” Ted says shortly. “You didn't want me to do it in the first place.”

That is not – entirely accurate. Nor entirely inaccurate. “I didn't want you to give up the violin,” Eliot admits. “You used to love it so much. I know it's not as sexy as bassist in a rock band, but – you were so damn _good_. But. You know. I think you should – make the music that feels right. I think there's no point otherwise.”

“I like the band,” Ted says. He sounds wistful. There's a _story_ there.

Eliot doesn't want to pry. “That's all that matters,” he says. Hopefully that's true. Probably, right?

As punishment for putting Eliot through parenting drama on an already stressful weekend, Eliot forces Ted to suffer through an all-Lana Del Rey playlist, at least until they stop for lunch. Ted suffers ungraciously, like the true music snob that he is; that only makes revenge all the more satisfying.

Eliot suggests the Denny's off the highway exit, but Ted must have discovered the Spirit of the Open Road deep in his soul or something, because he notices a truck stop further down with a janky local southern Ohio diner attached, and he cajoles Eliot into embracing the aesthetic. Eliot feels a _tiny_ bit guilty about Lana, just enough to give in on the lunch question.

He sends Ted on ahead to get a seat at the diner while Eliot fuels up, then uses the restroom, which manages to seem technically clean while still possessing a deep and unsettling air of unfreshness that sends Eliot to the counter afterwards to buy a six-dollar bottle of hand sanitizer. By the time Eliot strolls though the sliding door that joins the convenience store part of the truck stop to the diner, Ted's been on his own for, Eliot doesn't know, like ten or fifteen minutes? No time, really.

There's a bench in the waiting area of the diner, close to the counter, and Ted is sitting perched awkwardly on the edge of it, tugging on a curl near his neck while he half-looks at the guy standing beside him and talking to him, and he looks – _Ted_ , the same kid who all his life has been absurdly, embarrassingly eager to strike up a conversation with any random stranger at any random time or place – his blank face and his posture absolutely radiate _trapped_ , and Eliot experiences, all at once, a dizzying rush of panic and a cold, assessing inner silence.

He sizes the stranger up in a blink – maybe twenty-five, not a particularly big guy, but athletic-looking, scruffily dressed in work pants and a t-shirt, sandy blond and patchily bearded. He doesn't remind Eliot of anyone specific, other than, like – everyone, the rural Midwest in general, the same brand of Nobody Specific who's never mattered and never will, except to their victims.

Eliot's never been in this town before, but also, Eliot is from here. He knows this person.

Ted is, for all intents and purposes, from _Baltimore_. Eliot has no idea why he wants to be in southern Ohio, on his way to the funeral of the fucking _king_ of Nobody Specific, but – Eliot shouldn't have allowed it, he felt all along it was the wrong thing to do, and he let himself get ganged up on when he _shouldn't_ have. He's so pissed at himself.

“ _Hey, Dad_ ,” Ted says, weirdly loud, and jumps up from the bench, practically bounding to Eliot's side in a swirl of broomstick skirt over his TARDIS-patterned leggings. Eliot spreads a theoretically protective but actually pointless hand across Ted's back, still watching this blond asshole as he slinks toward the exit, barely listening as Ted rattles off what the hostess told him about their table.

“Everything okay?” Eliot says, and Ted nods, smiling tightly.

Unreasonably, Eliot decides that shitty store-brand coffee pairs well with an acidic rush of adrenaline, so he bolts half the carafe before they've even ordered lunch, and he's-- he doesn't know, he's been so out of it for the last couple of days, so lost in the choppy waters of his own turbulent life story that he's hardly been able to focus--

That has to be why it takes him so long, but the kick of caffeine finally shakes him awake, and he sees it all over again in his mind: Ted balanced on the edge of the seat, ready to bolt, the guy angled toward him, standing above him with a hand braced on the windowsill behind the bench. The same thing Eliot saw the first time, except....

Except the third and the fourth and the fifth time he plays it through, what he sees isn't his life story at all. And the boy he's watching spread an undersized plastic container's worth of orange marmalade onto a biscuit _isn't Eliot at all_ , never has been.

God, Eliot's an idiot sometimes.

“So, does that happen a lot?” he asks, as casually as he can.

Ted's eyes flick up to him cautiously, and then he looks back down at his plate. “Does what happen?” Eliot makes a lazy gesture with his butter knife in the general direction of the front of the restaurant. “I don't know. Sometimes,” Ted says.

 _You're only sixteen_ , Eliot's brain says, which is not information that Ted needs. _You're just a little kid_ , Eliot's brain says, which is – likely not an opinion that Ted shares. Eliot's not even sure if it's what he believes himself. Maybe half the time.

When Eliot left the rural Midwest for the first time, determined to be famous and adored, he was eighteen. That's – a big two years, though, right? It's one of those two-year spans, sixteen to eighteen, that makes a lot of difference.

When he met Margo – beautiful, confident Margo Hanson, living flashily and carelessly, borrowing against her inheritance, the ink barely dry on her emancipation papers, she was--

She was seventeen.

Eliot looks again at his kid. Tries to _look_ , tries to see something that has nothing to do with Eliot, tries to see him the way a stranger might. Ted is...flashy and careless and confident, like his mother. It shines out most strongly when he performs, but it's visible all the time, and not just in the way he dresses; it comes from Ted, from who he is. He's – good-looking, always has been, always pulled attention, pulled compliments, with his father's kind, intelligent eyes and broad smile in a more fine-boned, delicate face.

“What?” Ted challenges, which is – fair, because Eliot is staring at him, yes.

Eliot shakes his head a little. But that's not really enough, he knows. It's not what Ted relies on Eliot for, which has always been...a slightly higher degree of honesty than he can expect from other adults. “When I think about getting cornered by – some guy like that,” Eliot says slowly, “I figure it's. For me, when I was a teenager, I'd get my ass kicked. By a guy like that.”

Ted is watching him carefully. God, they really are Quentin's eyes, the same eyes that have always seen right through all Eliot's dumb, fumbling attempts to explain himself, right to the reality of him. “That was a long time ago,” Ted says, and Eliot cashes in an entire decade of training in responsible parenthood not to flip him off.

“Or maybe I just wasn't as pretty as you are,” Eliot says wryly. “But. You know, you're still – barely sixteen, and--”

“Jesus, Eliot,” Ted says, putting Eliot out of his misery with a lopsided smile. “You think I was going to blow him in the parking lot or something?”

“Yeah, right after the panic attack you were about to have,” Eliot says. “Look, I know you know that no grown fucking man has any business sniffing around you. That guy's not the point.”

“What's the point?” Ted asks, and it's not even really a challenge this time. He sounds curious.

Eliot's a little curious, too. He had a point somewhere, didn't he? “I don't know,” he admits. “I was just – thinking about how little advice I can give you, you know? I was never... I was never sixteen. Not the way you are. I was worried about totally different things when I was your age. I was just...trying to survive, and I'm glad you don't think about your life that way, but I feel like that was kind of. My wheelhouse, fatherly-guidance-wise. Not how to ask someone out, or how to know if someone likes you, or how to ditch someone who likes you too much. Just how to be in the fucking closet.”

Ted thinks about that a little bit while he drinks his Sprite and Eliot drops another thimble of fake creamer into his cooling coffee. “Did your dad know?” he finally asks. “That you were queer?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Eliot says. “Not that I ever told him, but he. Did seem aware, yes.”

“Was he really that bad?” Ted asks, almost timidly.

Once upon a time, Eliot thinks, he would've been able to say _yes_ without blinking. Quite recently, actually. But.... Eliot doesn't know. The guy died alone. Why keep kicking him now? “I don't know if – people are good or bad,” Eliot says, feeling his way slowly through the words. “He was – bad at being a father. He was bad for me.”

“He hit you?” The uncertainty in Ted's voice puzzles Eliot for a second, until he realizes that – probably no one ever said that around Ted, not in so many words. They've tried so hard to protect Ted, to give him all possible versions of safety; Eliot hadn't really thought until now about how many things about all of them have accidentally become Dark Family Secrets along the way.

“Yeah,” Eliot says. “A lot. Actually.”

“Well,” Ted says, obviously reaching for positivity, “so you're doing way better than that, at least. Fatherly-guidance-wise.”

“That's really beautiful,” Eliot says. “I can see our tombstone now: Margo and Eliot Hanson-Waugh. Beloved Mother and Guy Who Drank In Moderation and Managed Not to Beat the Kids.”

“We might tighten that up a little,” Ted says, smiling. “It sounds expensive. What about just Beloved Mother and Guy, how does that sound?”

“This is why I'm leaving my secret pirate gold to your sisters in the will,” Eliot says.

He lets Ted drive again when they get back on the highway. It slows them down a little, but they have the time.

It's not even five when they get checked into the hotel in Columbus. Eliot hangs his funeral suit for tomorrow in the bathroom and uses the travel steamer on it while he delegates dinner research to Ted. They end up going to the Germantown district, lured by the promise of a bookstore that fills thirty-two rooms and a city block, and they spend an hour rambling through its courtyards and corridors, amassing graphic novels for Ted and picture books for the girls, a pastry cookbook for Eliot and a couple of short story collections for Quentin and Margo to fight over. In addition to the armful of things Eliot's agreed to buy, Ted buys himself an oversized Goodnight Moon t-shirt, and Eliot recognizes the keen consideration he's giving it, the highly specific look of a young man whose fancies have turned to destroying a garment and rebuilding it for the stage.

They drink tea in the courtyard gardens while they wait for their reservation time at the restaurant Ted picked, watching the college students trickle out for Friday night's entertainment and critiquing their wardrobe choices. “Actually,” Ted says, still looking through his phone, “according to the website, Columbus has the highest number of fashion designers per capita of any American city besides New York or Los Angeles.”

 _Ohio?_ Baffling. “Well, you could come here for college,” Eliot says. “That way the family can take the whole fashionista hat-trick.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ted says, although Eliot hadn't actually been serious. “It also has the nation's largest resident theater company. I mean, it seems like a cool city.”

 _Don't move away_ , Eliot's brain says. _You're too young, it's too far, you need us. Stay._ He doesn't say that, obviously. He's not crazy. Ted won't be too young for long, and of course he'll want to leave home. It's a miracle he doesn't already want to leave their slightly-too-small little brownstone, slightly-too-full of louder, more demanding children and more than the ordinary number of nosy parents.

Columbus isn't even all that far. He'd be back with a sack of laundry every other weekend, probably – at least until he had a new band and weekend gigs to think about.

God, he's so talented, so charming and well-read, creative and broad-minded and extroverted, and he's going to do so fucking well wherever he goes. He won't even have to spend an unreasonable proportion of his twenties unlearning a whole bunch of self-sabotaging bullshit, and – maybe Eliot can take credit for that last part, if not for any of the rest of it. Maybe it's not what Eliot did for him, fatherly-guidance-wise, so much as what he manged not to do _to_ him, daddy-issues-wise.

Eliot's only ever been Ted's third-favorite parent, not that Eliot can blame him. Still, if – when Ted goes, Eliot will.... He'll miss Ted's sense of humor, malformed for life by his love of _Fawlty Towers_ and _Red Dwarf_ , and his weird ability to build a pretty credible salad out of whatever's in the fridge, and his baroque and pretentious taste in cumbersome European board games, and arguing with him about hogging the sewing machine, and the sound of his violin blending with the piano when nothing but an evening sonata will calm the little ones enough to get them into bed.

“Yeah,” Eliot says. “Very artsy. You'd fit in.”

They're hungry enough by the time they get to dinner to go whole hog on the Germantown experience. They even Zoom back home to give everyone a look at the ridiculous spread – schnitzel and stuffed cabbage and knockwurst over sauerkraut, potato soup _and_ potato salad – and everyone laughs and blows kisses, and Eliot can't stand being so far away from them, he's really just. Ruined for life.

For the first time in hours and hours, he thinks of his father, and all he really feels is. Kind of a confused pity, because the alcohol and the rage addictions, the consuming need not to be shamed or to seem weak by association with a weak and shameful son – yeah, it fucked Eliot up a little, but when he looks through a silly little five-inch screen at his kids climbing over each other and putting their noses too close to the computer and saying _daddy, daddy, here I am, hi, daddy!_ while his beautiful wife struggles gamely to keep them from smacking their hands down on the keyboard, there's no question who paid the price for his father's failures, and it's not Eliot. Eliot's good.

Quentin is pretty quiet on the call, smiling distractedly and trying to keep the kids semi-caged on his lap. Something's up with him, and they trade glances that say _I know_ and _I know you know_ , but it's fine. If it's not fine, Quentin will make contact with him about it; he always does. “Get some rest, baby,” is the most incriminating thing Eliot says to him, and only as they're signing off.

“I'll stay up all night just to spite you,” Quentin says with a little smile and a tentative flicker of his lashes that says _I won't be asleep if you want to call, can you please call?_ Eliot nods, and he sees Quentin relax a little into the certainty of being heard, of being known so well that he's heard even when he's not free to speak.

Dinner is amazing, absolutely worth every starchy calorie, and Eliot is so satisfied he only takes a bit of the strudel on the tip of his fork to try it, leaving the rest of their “shared” dessert for Ted. They emerge into a world that's gone luminous as only a well-lit strip of bars can be in the depths of a wintry weekend night, and Eliot triple-wraps his knit scarf and puts on his gloves while Ted, with a teenage boy's dumb, careless metabolism doesn't even bother to button up his jacket. They walk in well-fed silence back to the parking lot, each lugging a bag of books, and Eliot can't stop glancing sideways at Ted, in his skirt and his bright colors, smiling with natural Midwestern amiability at the people they pass by, running his hand thoughtlessly through his disheveled waves of hair – an inherited gesture, but somehow the opposite of his father's nervous tic. Ted is meeting life, not hiding from it, showing his face again and again so the world knows how to find him.

He will fit in here, in another two years. Here or somewhere like it. And he'll fall in love and find his best vices and make a bunch of self-conscious, derivative art and agonize about whether or not he'll ever be _discovered_ , burn money and be carelessly cruel with someone's heart and lie awake at night wondering if he's living up to his potential yet.

Yeah, it's his own life story Eliot is seeing, but this time maybe not just his. He was never sixteen like Ted is sixteen, but he was eighteen exactly the way he suspects Ted will be eighteen: gifted and ambitious, wild and proud.

Maybe Eliot hasn't missed the window for having a parenting wheelhouse yet.

Buoyed up by the possibility of being useful in the Tragic Bohemian Relationship Shenanigans department, Eliot interrupts Ted's endlessly looping repetitions of _Eloise said_ and _Eloise likes_ and _Eloise thinks_ in the car to say, “Okay, seriously, what's with the Eloise thing?”

“What?” Ted says, instantly defensive. “There's not, it's not a thing. She's our frontwoman.”

Their front _woman_. Eloise is fifteen. She has a little round face with freckles. She wears her hair in Swiss Miss braids. She looks like an American Girl doll. “Uh-huh,” Eliot says. “And?”

“And nothing,” Ted says, like Eliot is an alien tourist and not an almost-forty-year-old human person with a functioning brain. Eliot just glances over at him, and Ted slumps down in his seat. “She's dating Journey now,” he says.

Aha. Enter the drummer. Eliot _knew_ there was band drama. “Oof, sorry to hear it,” Eliot says. “You could always try hooking up with Phineas. Never know, it might get her attention.”

“Well – wouldn't that kind of be – using him?” Ted says.

Which – yes. Probably, yes. Okay, Eliot's getting a little ahead of himself; that was definitely Margo-appropriate advice, not Ted-appropriate advice. “Obviously I'm _joking_ ,” he says loftily. “Don't do it just to make Eloise jealous, I was just saying – he's a cute kid, and you've been friends for a long time. Sometimes you don't know if there's more than friendship there until you give someone a chance.”

“They,” Ted says. Eliot must look as puzzled as he feels, because Ted rolls his eyes and says, “Phin uses they/them--”

“Since _when_?” Eliot says. Phin and Ted have been friends practically since the the family got to Baltimore; he's eaten-- _they've_ eaten dinner at Eliot's table roughly three thousand times in the last six years.

“I don't know, _recently_ ,” Ted huffs. “I told you about this.”

“I swear you didn't,” Eliot says. “I'm just saying, Phin's a great kid.”

“I know he's-- they're great.”

“ _Ha_ ,” Eliot says.

He can see Ted's face in the wash of the passing headlights, trying not to smile. “It was recently,” he grumbles. “I _did_ tell you.”

Eliot lets it go, because no one in the history of the world has ever developed a crush on someone because their dad said they should. Even though he absolutely should, Ted and Phineas would be a _ridiculously_ cute couple.

When Eliot parks in the hotel lot and shuts the car off, Ted says a little hesitantly, “Eliot, can I ask you something?”

He _can_ , but he probably _shouldn't_ , in light of Eliot's track record so far tonight, but Eliot just unbuckles his seatbelt and says casually, “Yeah, of course.”

“So,” Ted says hesitantly, pulling his foot up onto the seat and plucking at his skirt to give himself something to do with his hands. “If somebody thinks – that guys can look really good and smell really good, and that it's fun to make out with them sometimes, but they've never really – met a guy that they're interested in asking out, or that they have, like, feelings for, is that – is there a name for that?”

“Oh, kiddo,” Eliot can't stop himself from saying. “Are you coming out to me as straight right now? Is that happening?”

“ _No_ ,” Ted says. “I – maybe? I don't know! Do you think I am?”

“This is really not the time to start caring what I think,” Eliot says. “I'm afraid this one is all you.”

Ted finally glances over at him, trying half-heartedly to glare before resting his cheek on his knee. “That's really the best you can do? I'm having a sexual identity crisis, and you're just like – _good luck with that_?”

“Okay, let's break this down,” Eliot says. “First of all, you are not having a crisis. Nothing about this is a crisis. You're just having – questions, so what? You're sixteen, this is exactly the right time to have questions about who you are.”

“What's the point of having _questions_ if you don't know how to figure out the fucking _answer_?” Ted snaps, and god, he's never sounded more like his dad. It's rare enough that Ted is in a bad mood; Eliot always forgets how neatly his crankiness matches up to Q's. “I mean, how do I know if I really am all these things I think I am, or if I just – talked myself into thinking it because I want to pretend to be special, but really I'm just another stupid cishet guy?”

“Hey,” Eliot says gently, reaching out to lay a brief touch Ted's hunched back. “You are special, okay? Trust me, you absolutely are, and you will be special even if life ends up taking you to, like, a ranch house in Ohio with a wife, two kids, and a dog, working in a bank and golfing in khakis on the weekends – which, by the way, you can do exactly that and still be queer, you would not even be the first. If that's what you eventually decide makes you happy.”

“I really don't think that would make me happy,” Ted says, a little of his normal smile coming back. “Well, except maybe the wife. And the dog. So you do think I'm really queer?”

Eliot – _really_ was never sixteen the way that Ted is sixteen. But this time when he thinks it, all he feels is affection and tenderness and pride for this little boy he's had the pleasure of watching grow up all the way from mermaids to motorcycle boots and mascara. “I can't answer that for you,” he says again. “But – you want my honest opinion, taking it for whatever it may or may not be worth?” Ted nods, a little apprehension creasing between his eyes. “Teenage boys objectively do not smell good,” Eliot assures him. “If you think some of them do, that's hormones, not logic, and I would say it's not a strong plus in the heterosexual column.”

“Good talk,” Ted says. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. Can we go in where there's heat now, please?”

Once they get inside and take their shoes and coats off, Ted wants to make a run to the end of the hall for ice and snacks, because it's been almost an hour since they ate an entire Bavarian village, so sure, time to stock up. Eliot sets his suitcase on his bed and unzips it to start collecting the night half of his hair and skin regimens, but right there propped against his shaving kit, there's an object that Eliot has never seen before, that he can't even identify.

It's rectangular, the size of a good manicure set, and when he picks it up, it's surprisingly heavy and cool. There's a piece of paper attached to it with a rubber band, and when Eliot detaches the two parts, he's left with a note in his right hand with his name on the front, and in his left hand--

He has seen it before, but not for a long, long time. It's a silver cigarette case, and it has his initials engraved on the front. It's too heavy to be empty, and when Eliot flicks the latch open with one thumb, the exposed machinery of a music box begins to roll, plinking out a familiar, tinny melody, and he can't prevent his brain from chiming in, providing the lyrics he knows so effortlessly well – _but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before, All at once I am several stories high, knowing I am on the street where you live..._

Carefully, Eliot closes it and sets it down on top of his neatly folded Sunday outfit, but even now that the room is silent except for the hum and click of the heater, he can hear his heartbeat and he can hear the song. Carefully, he opens the note.

_El--_

_I meant to give this to you myself, but it doesn't feel right to do it tonight, and I thought you might want to have it with you in Indiana. I know that you only have a few good memories of your hometown, so let this remind you of at least one of them._

_We've never really done anniversaries, but it's a game I like to play sometimes – what's our day? When did you and I become what we became? There are times I remember thinking I might love you; there's the night I was sure. You took my hand once, just to hold it while we crossed the hall together, and I knew somehow that you loved me, but I couldn't tell you the date – September something, or maybe October. I didn't tell you until later. You didn't tell me until a little later still. There's no definitive answer, and that's okay._

_But when I think back ten years, to the beginning of us, I think about the first time you sang to me, and the way you shared so much about yourself even though I was almost a stranger, and about how you were willing to drive half the night just so I wouldn't have to sleep alone on a night when I was sad. I don't mean to say that I fell in love with you that night, but I think I must have started to. I know that since that night, there's never been a night or day when you weren't with me somehow, in my thoughts, and soon in my heart, too. Do you have certain memories, certain moments, that are frozen for you, so that all you have to do is think about them and you're right back there again, or still there, always there? I think back ten years, and in some way I can't explain, there we still are, there we always are – both of us alone in the dark, the only way we knew how to be back then, but you're starting to sing and I'm starting to fall._

_And you are still everything I know about music, my love, and I am still falling for you, deeper and deeper, ever on and on. Ten years feels significant, but at the same time it's nothing, it's gone by so fast. I want ten more years. I want fifty. I want you always. I want you, always._

_Yours entirely,_

_Q_

“Jesus, Quentin,” Eliot murmurs out loud for no reason. Is this why Q seemed so squirrely on the call at dinner? Was he anxious about when Eliot would find this – about how he'd react?

He opens the music box again and lets it play, watching its simple mechanics. The little scroll turns. Little knobs press up on little bars of different thickness, making them vibrate in the right order. It's not very different from a piano, when the hammers strike the wires. Eliot wonders where you go to get something like this custom-made – a music shop, a watchmaker's? The internet, probably.

What's their day? Eliot was in love for so long before he was brave enough to admit it even to himself, let alone to anyone else. To this day he can't recognize when it happened, because he was too busy telling himself he couldn't let it happen, and that's always felt like – something he fucked up, a missing memory that's gone because Eliot killed it in its cradle. But if Quentin doesn't know either, then maybe it's not so terrible, not knowing. _There's no definitive answer_ , he reads again, _and that's okay._

Quentin won that little piece of wisdom _hard_ , Eliot knows. All the sharp edges of his sharp mind grinding and breaking off when they came in contact with the world's bigger, sharper edges, and Eliot's been there watching as Quentin learned, bit by bit, to stand further back. To care less about knowing things and more about experiencing them.

 _Music is math_ , Quentin used to like to argue. Wavelengths of vibrations and all that. Little gears turning, plucking the right piece of metal, striking the eardrum, electric pulses to the brain. He's not wrong, but Eliot still enjoyed arguing about it, because fuck math. Eventually the debate got boring and they gave it up.

 _You are still everything I know about music, my love._ Jesus, _everybody_ should date writers. For Eliot's twenty-seventh birthday, Quentin sold his desk and put a piano in his window, and he said _this is for you, it belongs here and so do you_ , and Eliot loved him so much that it defied words, defied reason, felt too wild and relentless to be anything but a beast that would eventually sink its fangs in him and leave him to bleed out.

Eliot loved music long before he knew what love was supposed to feel like; he loved music the right way, the only way, and it loved him back the right way, with perfect constancy and perfect care. He sang On the Street Where You Live for Quentin when he was infatuated with a brand-new lover and he wanted desperately to prove he had more to offer than a highly convenient location; he played it on his new piano when he wanted and feared accepting the gift and its giver; he played it when his heart was breaking, when he felt helpless to reach through the fog of Quentin's illness and grab hold of him, pull him out. Whatever Eliot knows about love, whatever in him has always been enough to lure Quentin out and hold him in Eliot's life, it has to be something he learned from songs like this. Where else could he have learned it?

Songs like this were all he had for so long.

What the _fuck_ is he doing in Ohio? Why is he here, why isn't he at home, tucking his girls into bed with lullabies, taking this gift out of Quentin's own hands as their fingers brush past each other, thanking him with a kiss?

What did he think he was going to get out of this trip? Closure? He ended things a long time ago. He got his closure sitting in a lawyer's office, saying _I really don't care what happens to him, I just want him away from Ted._

A knock on the door interrupts Eliot's thoughts, which is weird. He opens the door expecting housekeeping – maybe they forgot towels for the room or something – but instead there's a woman, attractive enough with her upswept auburn hair and chunky glasses, maybe five or ten years older than Eliot. Over her shoulder, Eliot can see Ted, hanging further back in the hallway with two girls. “Hello,” the woman says. “My name's Audrey, and I'm here bringing my daughter and my niece to look at OSU. Apparently they befriended your son by the ice machine and invited him to come up to the pool with them; I thought I should let you know he's actually definitely invited and not being creepy or whatever?”

“That is good to know,” Eliot says, bemused. “Hi, I'm Eliot. I don't think he brought a swimsuit or anything, though.”

“Yes, I did,” Ted pipes up cheerfully.

“Why?” Eliot says.

“Uh, in case there was a pool at the hotel?” Ted says, and one of the girls giggles.

Eliot exchanges a bemused, _teenagers, right?_ glance with Audrey. “Okay, well – yeah, I guess that's fine. What time does the pool close?”

“Eleven,” Audrey says. “We'll have him right back at eleven, promise. And, you know, I was planning to kill a couple of hours at the bar, so if you don't have anything better to do, you're welcome to join me.”

Part of Eliot does consider it, because he could sure use the drink, and he's basically the Jane Goodall of wine moms; they accept him effortlessly now as one of their own. “You know, it's tempting,” he says, opening the door wider and standing aside for Ted to come in. “But I was just getting ready to call my partner.”

“Well, if you change your mind,” she says. “Okay, girls, don't just hang out in the hall, people are getting ready for bed. Ted will join you up there.” The girls wave, giggle, and scamper for the elevator, their beachy coverups fluttering around their bare legs and their flip-flops slapping noisily as they run. Audrey gives Eliot another commiserating look and a wave and heads for the stairs down to the lobby, and the bar.

“I don't guess you brought any ice,” Eliot says to the bathroom door, but just to be annoying. He doesn't care about the ice.

“Shit, I forgot the ice,” Ted says over the sound of the sink running. “Sorry! Charity and Meredith were there first, and we just started talking. Meredith is trans, and she was asking about my eyeliner, they go to Catholic school and I don't really think she knows anyone other than cis girls who do that, so anyway I guess that's how we kinda connected. She's living with her aunt and her cousin now and they want to go to college together next year, and we were talking about the big theater I mentioned earlier, because she wants to be a theater major – Charity, not Meredith. Meredith's thinking pre-med.”

Eliot has hosted dinner parties and learned less about some of his guests. “What the hell, you were gone _five minutes_ ,” he says. Although he glances at the clock, and it has actually been longer than that. Lost track of time, he guesses.

Ted looks like another person when he comes out in his swimsuit, his face scrubbed clean and his hair tied back. “Well, they're really cool,” he says. “Okay, I'll see you later!”

“Bye,” Eliot says to the door as it closes.

So he guesses he has the room to himself for about an hour and a half, which is fine. He takes his time in the shower, finger-curls and diffuse dries his hair afterwards, which he's been too – lazy? Self-actualized? – to spend time doing basically ever since Fi was born. He does skip the exfoliating part of his skincare regimen, however, because it tends to leave his face temporarily a bit scrubbed-raw looking, and. He doesn't know, it's not like Quentin hasn't seen his pores before, but. Whatever, he is both lazy and pretty self-actualized, but it's not a crime to retain a little vanity around the edges.

He puts on his robe and spends enough time fiddling with the little gooseneck stand he brought along with his phone to get a decent angle on himself lying down propped on his hand – relaxed and intimate, not overly posed. Not _obviously_ overly posed.

He pings Quentin by text, and a few minutes later, there's Quentin settling into the desk chair in his room, in front of his laptop. “Hi,” Quentin says breathlessly. “What's – what's up?”

Eliot lifts the letter between two fingers, flashing it in front of the camera. “So how come,” he drawls, “I always forget that under that nerdy professor drag, you are _very smooth_ , Coldwater?”

Quentin laughs, a little embarrassed but mostly relieved. “Uh, I don't know,” he says. “Would it ruin the mystique if I told you that was very much not a first draft? So – you liked it, I guess? The music box, I mean.”

“I love it,” Eliot says, in all sincerity. “I – don't know what to say. Thank you.”

“I'm glad,” Quentin says. “Where's Ted?”

“Partying with some girls he met by the ice machine.”

Quentin blinks. “I can't tell if you're kidding?” he says, and when Eliot shakes his head very seriously, Quentin laughs. “Of course he is. Where does that kid _get it_ from? Serious question.”

“Margo, probably,” Eliot says.

“Yeah,” Quentin says fondly. “Probably Margo.”

“Well, don't tease him too much about it,” Eliot says. “He's feeling a little sensitive about the possibility that he's actually cishet after all.”

“He said that?” Quentin asks curiously. “Huh. Well, it's fine, I was prepared for the possibility. Statistically speaking, one of our kids was bound to be.”

“He's just exploring. Who knows where he'll land. Oh, and Eloise and Journey are a thing now.”

Quentin winces. “Poor Teddy. God, does any part of you miss high school even a little?”

“Not one atom,” Eliot says firmly.

“Well, it sounds like you two have had quite a weekend already, and it's only Friday.”

“Yeah, it's... I don't know, it's been nice.” Ted used to tell Eliot everything, and now he doesn't. He tells his friends, Eliot guesses. That's fine, that's just – Ted becoming more independent, which Eliot's pretty sure is the whole point of raising him. It's fine, but. Today was still nice. “How are the babies?”

Quentin hesitates for a beat. “They're okay. Fiona struggled a little at bedtime. Guess you're kind of irreplaceable after all.”

“I should've stayed,” Eliot says.

“A little bit of separation anxiety never killed anyone,” Quentin assures him.

“No, I mean – not just that, I. I don't honestly know why I'm _doing_ this, Q. I mean, I go to the church and suffer through a bunch of tuneless hymns and a bullshit eulogy about salvation, followed by awkward silences where a bunch of distant relatives pretend he wasn't a drunk and a failure over poorly seasoned potato salad, and I get – what, what do I get out of that?”

“I don't know,” Quentin says gently. “But you were determined to go as soon as you heard when the funeral was, so I think – maybe you should trust your instincts. Maybe it's not rational, but it's important to some part of you.”

A little silence falls, but the good kind. Eliot lets his eyes roam up Quentin's neck, bare except for the tendrils of hair floating free of his manbun, lets himself imagine running his lips over the hint of stubble along Quentin's jaw. “I feel like I should say more,” he finally admits. “More than just – you know, _hey thanks_. What you wrote, it's.... I wish I could tell you how it made me feel. I wish I could say something that made you feel the same way.”

Quentin smiles. “I mean, it's fine. I know I'm the sappy one. You – you do make me feel the same way, you just. Go about it differently.”

“I want – the same thing you want, what you said. I want more time. To be with you.”

“Fifty years?” Quentin says lightly.

“A hundred years,” Eliot says, not lightly at all.

“You plan to be a hundred and thirty-seven, huh?” Quentin says.

Eliot shrugs with the shoulder that's not holding his weight. “I will if you will.”

“Okay,” Quentin says. “Yeah, it's a deal.”

“I'm curious about something, though. That night – in the car, when I called you at the hotel – that was like, the beginning of June or something. So what's November fifteenth?”

“Ah,” Quentin says, and grins a little. “Truthfully, the thing was supposed to be ready in June, but there were some technical issues and I didn't actually have it in my hands until almost the end of the summer. So then I was trying to think of a day that would be, you know, a good day. And – I don't know, do you, do you remember – how I was that year, in November?”

Vividly. It was the first major depression Quentin had in Indiana. The first time Eliot thought there might be – worse consequences to letting himself go and fall in love than he'd ever imagined before. “I remember,” he says.

“It wasn't the worst I'd ever been,” Quentin says, “but it was – so much worse than the other times because – of you, because I was so convinced that I was losing you. I mean, it was so built up in my head, it _felt_ as real as if you'd already told me we should take some time apart or give each other more space or whatever I was sure you were getting ready to tell me. I spent most of the month – I don't know. Grieving you, grieving us. I was so caught up in it that I couldn't see how you were _still right there_ , how you weren't actually trying to get away from me at all.”

“I thought this would be sappier,” Eliot murmurs, a backhanded apology for – making Quentin visit a place in his memory that real life hasn't dragged him to in years.

“Yeah, sorry,” Quentin says. “This part is more romantic, I promise. On the fifteenth, there was a party I made you go to; I'd skipped every other department party that semester, and I was kind of out of excuses, I had to go. So I brought you along, and you were – you know, perfect, like you are, everybody loved you. And I was just – feeling shitty and resentful because I didn't want to be there, and feeling like everyone was asking behind my back – you know, what someone like you was even doing with me. But then there was just...this moment. You sat down by the fire, and it just – lit you up in this particular way, all these dark reds and ambers coming out where the firelight touched you, and for a minute it was like – a cloud passing, and suddenly I could think straight, I could _see you_. For a minute I was kind of in my right mind again, and it was so obvious that you were – beautiful and good and loyal, and that you were there because of me, because you wanted to be with me. So I – sat down next to you, and I thought to myself, _I'm so sick of overthinking everything_ , of thinking so much about how I was going to lose you soon that I was wasting this beautiful night when you were _here_ , when you were still with me.”

“That was a good night,” Eliot says quietly. “I remember it.” He remembers how relaxed Quentin felt leaning against him, so completely unphased by all his friends and colleagues knowing exactly who and what Eliot was to him. He remembers Quentin lightly kissing the corner of his mouth, and that it was the first time Quentin had wanted to kiss him in weeks. How Eliot could have wept from the sheer relief of knowing that, bad as things were, his sweet Quentin was still alive in there.

“Do you remember that I told you I loved you?”

Eliot smiles and rolls his eyes just a little. “Did you think I was going to remember everything _but_ that part?”

Quentin concedes the point with a chuckle. “I think – I think the reason that night is so special to me is. I had this revelation. I was still pretty deep in my bullshit, I still thought we were probably – almost over. But I thought... if I was even just _one percent_ more sure that you and I could make it than I was sure that we were doomed, then I had to try. I didn't have to know for sure, right? I could just be. One percent more hopeful than I was miserable. And actually that-- I ended up using that a lot. It didn't always work, but a lot of the time it did. When I knew what I should do to show up for you but I didn't want to, or it felt too hard, I would ask myself, do I love him one percent more than this feels impossible? It felt doable, it was a nice, low bar. I cleared it – more often than not. I know there were still a lot of shit times after that, but. I don't know, that helped me drag myself out of it a lot. Knowing that I could do hard things, if I could just find that one percent.”

“If I'd been half as brave as you back then, I would have said it back,” Eliot says. “I wanted to.”

“I'm glad you didn't,” Quentin says. “You chose your own time, you said it when it felt right. I already knew, but you deciding you were ready to say it on your own, that's what meant so much to me. And I wasn't brave. I was just – one percent more in love than I was fucked up.”

“How about now?” Eliot says to lighten the mood.

“The graphs have diverged significantly,” Quentin says, separating his hands so far that they're half out of the camera's frame. “Way more in love, way less fucked up. _God_ , you're beautiful. How are you working with, like, a Samsung and hotel lighting, and you still look like you're at a goddamn photo shoot?”

Approximately three hundred dollars in boutique skincare products, but Quentin doesn't need to know that. “I wish I'd stayed home,” Eliot says. “I wish I could put my hands on you.”

“You'll be back on Sunday,” Quentin says. “You can put your hands anywhere you want then, I promise.”

“I'll hold you to it.”

“Yeah, that, too,” Quentin says, and he's trying to sound all cool and sexy, but the little crack in his voice gives him away. Eliot thinks _desperate_ is much sexier than _cool_ , anyway. Well, not always. But on Quentin, yes, absolutely. Suddenly Quentin smiles his broadest, most breathtaking smile and says, “I should probably go. Or else it's gonna get weird.”

“Good call,” Eliot sighs. Ted's unlikely to show up before eleven, but Eliot still can't bring himself to seriously contemplate jerking off in the room they're sharing. “Goodnight, sweet boy.”

“Goodnight, gorgeous,” Quentin says softly, brushing his fingers over the edge of the laptop screen, which _should not_ make Eliot shiver like he can feel them trailing from his collarbone down his chest, but does anyway. “Please take care of yourself tomorrow. Call if you need anything.”

Eliot nods and blows a little kiss off the tips of his fingers, and the last he sees of Quentin before the call disconnects, he's smiling.

Quentin smiles most of the time now. Those diverging graphs, Eliot guesses.

Eliot doesn't feel like he has to wait up for Ted, per se, but he kind of – does anyway, snuggling down into bed (when was the last time he was in bed alone? Eliot truly can't even remember) and fighting off sleep by dicking around on YouTube, watching review videos for arthouse movies he can pretend he's had time to actually see, historical costuming tutorials just for fun.

Just before eleven, he turns the light off, so that Ted won't think he's – whatever. Waiting up. Just after eleven, Ted creeps in carefully and closes himself into the bathroom. The sound of the shower lulls Eliot, entirely by accident, to sleep.

He wakes up in the dark, in the morning, the same time his alarm would normally go off. He lies in bed, getting his bearings, planning his day. Like he normally would.

He wants to cry. Why is he _doing_ this? Why is he putting himself through this? He doesn't want to drive to Whiteland today. He doesn't want to walk into his father's church. He doesn't want to choose, over and over again, when to smile and when to lie and when to bow his head, and he doesn't want to sing _I need thee every hour_ and _I will cling to the old rugged cross_.

 _It's important to some part of you_ , Quentin said, which – maybe. Eliot would feel better if he knew what fucking part, because it's coming as an unpleasant fucking surprise, that any part of him wants to set foot in Whiteland one last time.

When he planned this trip, he was – in shock, he guesses, or something like that. He didn't feel anything, it all just seemed to happen without any decisions being made, like it was inevitable. Is that the only reason he's doing this – because it seemed the thing to do, the thing one does when one is, technically, bereaved?

Eliot gets out of bed, half an hour before his alarm, and goes to use the bathroom. When he washes his hands, he can see in the corner of his vision the garment bag hanging on the back of the door, his pressed, moderately priced, smartly tailored black funeral suit waiting for him to put it on.

It's not couture, by any means, but it almost certainly cost more than any one outfit Eliot's father ever wore in his life, including all three of his weddings. Eliot's sure as hell going to look better in it – is just as a matter of plain fact, a better-looking man than his father was, entirely due to the care he's taken with himself and the care his father never did. It's the elegant and understated yet contemporary suit of a man who's been successful since he left home, even if that success is mostly defined by making himself indispensible-ish to two people with small inheritances and giant brains.

Is that what Eliot wants? Is he just – trying to prove something to a bunch of second cousins who barely remember he exists? To the corpse of his estranged father? To Whiteland, Indiana as an esoteric entity that's haunted him off and on all his life? Did he come all this way just to feel superior, now that the man who always made him feel small and helpless and ashamed has been, you know, _fucking dead for a week_ , and is unlikely to have the power to snap Eliot's will like a twig anymore, like Eliot will always, always know that he always could?

Eliot sits down on the edge of the bathtub, still slightly damp from Ted's late shower last night, and for the first time in almost ten years, he lets his father make him cry.

Because his father might have loved him, in his way, but he never liked Eliot and was never proud of him. Because Eliot doesn't love his father anymore, but he used to, and no amount of love he gave was ever acceptable, ever made him acceptable. Because today they're going to bury him, and they'll sing songs about his eternal reward, and Eliot doesn't believe there is any Judgment, not now and not in death, any calling to account, any repayment for damages. There's just life, brutal and unfair, and if Eliot doesn't show up in that church today he suspects that no one will even speak his name, and as far as the world is concerned, Eliot Waugh, the awkward, timid little sissy with the horse face and all the bruises – the boy Eliot once was – will simply not exist. Will never have existed. Will provide no particular impediment to his father's _fucking salvation_.

So he cries for a while, because of – all that. And then he stands up and adjusts his robe and washes his face with cold water. And he unzips the garment bag and pushes it apart and looks at his suit.

God, it's exhausting, _caring_ about this shit. There's a reason Eliot gave it up years ago, or at least thought he did. Asserting his existence over and over, as loudly as possible. Proving himself to an imaginary audience of immovable objects. Letting men with open contempt for him dangle the vague possibility that he might someday meet an ever-shifting standard of acceptability.

He became someone who would never stoop so low as to ask for approval or validation, someone hard and glossy, proud and predatory. _Be_ the glamorous megabitch you want to see in the world, right? Simple as that. He burned off all his weaknesses one by one. Buried them in a cellar and lost the map.

He didn't, of course. Not really. But he tried his best.

Eliot zips the bag up again. He leans forward, his forehead against the cool vinyl, the door behind it taking his weight. He thinks about crying again, but the moment's passed.

On November seventeenth, the morning of his father's funeral, Eliot has this revelation. It's not possible to stop caring entirely – it's probably not even advisable – but the thing is, he doesn't have to stop.

He only has to love the man he is, the life he lives...one percent more than he cares about settling some impossible score with his father's ghost.

And like – fuck math, but Eliot can solve that equation just fine.

Outside, he can hear the alarm going off on Ted's phone – the Wilhelm scream, for some unfathomable reason. By the time Eliot heads out there, Ted has managed to shut it off, rolling to his back with a heavy sigh and an arm thrown over his eyes. Drama queen. That's Margo's fault, too.

“Morning, sunshine,” Eliot says, sitting on the edge of his own bed. “How was the pool?”

“Pretty fun,” Ted admits. He yawns and rolls onto his side, head on his hand. “So what time do we have to leave?”

Eliot looks at him – tries to look at him the way a stranger might, but fails. Ted doesn't depend on Eliot for every little thing in his life anymore, thank god, but the boy he was can't be erased, can never stop being part of Eliot's life. Won't cease to exist to Eliot, even on the not-too-distant day when Eliot looks at his son and sees a grown man. “I don't know,” Eliot says absently. “What else did you find out was in Columbus? Anything interesting?”

“Uh – yeah, I guess,” Ted says. “Like, there's a museum, a bunch of galleries, that kind of thing. There's a whole garment district, because of the designers, like I said.”

“Let's do that,” Eliot says. “All that.”

Ted blinks at him, obviously unsure if it's his morning brain or Eliot that's malfunctioning. “Well, we don't – have time for that, right? The funeral--”

“No, I'm saying fuck the funeral,” Eliot says. “I decided I don't want to go. Let's spend the day here instead, it sounds fun.”

Ted sits up and pushes up the sleeves of his too-baggy flannel pajamas. “Eliot, you know you can't, um. Are you sure? Because you can't, like, change your mind again. It'll be too late – like, forever too-late.”

“You are being a real pain in the ass, for someone I'm offering to buy clothes for,” Eliot says. “And in the heart of the fashion capitol of the Midwest, no less.”

“Oh, we're shopping-shopping?” Ted says, finally smiling as he wraps his head around what's happening right now. “You left that part out.”

“Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to have to wear Sunday's traveling outfit today, so I need something to wear tomorrow. Hey, if your new friends are still here tonight, we can take them to dinner.”

“Okay,” Ted says, still seeming a little dazed by the speed at which his immediate future has reshaped itself. “I just, um. I don't want you to be sad later, you know?”

 _I will be sad later_ , Eliot's brain says. _I'll be sad when you're off living your own utterly fabulous life. I'll be sad when you fuck up, when you get hurt, when you lose people, when you try hard and still fail, when everything feels broken and your parents can't come and fix it anymore._ He doesn't say that. What's the point? Eliot's the one who signed up for this gig, after all; it's not Ted's problem.

“I appreciate you looking out for me,” Eliot says. “But – look, whatever he was or wasn't when he was alive, he's gone now. I'm alive. And if you don't spend your life on the things you love – I mean, what a goddamn waste. There's some fatherly guidance for you: life's fucking short. Waste as little of it as possible on stupid shit.”

“Okay,” Ted says, clearly humoring Eliot now. “And how do you know what's stupid shit?”

Eliot shrugs. “People who don't love you back, mostly.”

“That simple, huh?” Ted says. Eliot shrugs. It's not really. Or maybe it is. The people who don't love you back. The music that feels wrong for you. Stay away from all that and it's not like happiness is guaranteed, but when is it ever? Stay away from all that and you maybe have a shot. That simple. Ted yawns again and runs his hand through the leonine mess of his sleep-garbled waves of hair. He smiles crookedly at Eliot and says, a little shy and a little teasing but fully sincere, “Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime,” Eliot says.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Lucy Kaplansky song of the same name, which is probably my favorite love song of all time, and I've waited ages to come up with the right fic to pair with it. Comments loved, here and at [@spiders-hth-is-an-outlier](https://spiders-hth-is-an-outlier.tumblr.com/)


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